Saturday 28 January 2012 09.30 EST
First published on Saturday 28 January 2012 09.30 EST

Newt Gingrich might just be the best thing that has ever happened to Mitt Romney.

There, I've said it. It is a scenario that does not appear to be occurring to many people in the media or the political world, whether they are on the right of the spectrum or fervently hoping that Barack Obama wins a second term. For them, the conventional wisdom runs like this: former House speaker Gingrich is a disaster for the Republicans in general and Romney in particular. He has prevented the swift installation of the one candidate who, everyone agreed, was the best choice to beat Obama from an admittedly weak field.

At the same time, he has savaged Romney on everything from Bain Capital to his tax returns, to healthcare reforms and his penchant for Cayman Island bank accounts. He has dented Romney's image and message by painting him as a millionaire wishy-washy flip-flopper who will be mincemeat in the face of the Obama machine (unlike daring, brave, more conservative Newt, of course).

All this might be true. But here is another scenario.

The brutal and sustained assault has made Mitt Romney a much better, stronger candidate. Here was a man who believed he was cruising to the nomination, and events were backing that belief up. Gingrich shattered that and made him fight for his political life. Romney rose to the challenge. He proved that both he and his campaign have the ice in their blood to go negative on a rival. They have taken the fight to an implacable opponent and – if current polls in Florida hold out – they are winning the war.

It can be hard to do that. Just ask John Kerry, who ignored unfair attacks too long in 2008 and got "Swiftboated". Not so Romney. Every Gingrich pile-on has been met with something just as egregious right back at the former speaker.

But, if he still ends up as the winner of the GOP nod, what sort of Romney will emerge from the fight? Conventional wisdom holds that it will be a Romney defined in the public eye as an uncaring multimillionaire with no meaningful understanding of what it is like to be an ordinary American still suffering from the impact of the Great Recession. The revelations of Romney's low tax rate, his foreign bank accounts, his "blind trust" and his work at Bain have all become national talking points. They have fed into an image of Romney as an aloof rich man, which might not be a problem in normal times (remember George HW Bush), but in 2012 – in the midst of Occupy and the Tea Party movements – can only be a major handicap.

Maybe. But Gingrich has forced those potentially damaging issues into the race nice and early. That might be a huge favour to Romney.

Gingrich may have done the Obama campaign's work for them, but, from the president's point of view, he has fired all that ammunition far too early. As such, it has only wounded Romney, and he has a long time to get his message and image back on track. If these things had emerged in September – as Obama's strategists would no doubt have liked – then they could have proved fatal. Instead, Romney's taxes and his Bain work might be background noise come November. Most voters will already have taken them on board and will be looking for other stories and issues to get concerned about.

For a similar scenario just look at Obama's own run in 2008. He, too, was engaged in a ding-dong battle with a magnificent fighter in the shape of Hillary Clinton. Democrats moaned and cried that whoever won would be so damaged that they could never beat John McCain, who had wrapped up the Republican nomination so early. It did not turn out that way.

Obama and his team were toughened by the fight and they efficiently filleted him. They learned lessons and discipline against Clinton that stood them in good stead against McCain. And the scandals that emerged during the fight with Clinton? Obama too was lucky that the news about the fiery sermons of Rev Jeremiah Wright came out in March 2008, not October. His links to former Weather Undergound radical Bill Ayers emerged in April. That allowed him to weather both storms early.

Will something similar happen for Romney, then? The conventional wisdom might be right this time. But any thinking pundit or political strategist should look at the opposite scenario, too. It is possible that, unwittingly, Newt Gingrich is doing Mitt Romney the biggest favour of his entire political life.